


i never asked you what's wrong

by chemicalflashes



Series: Instrumentality + What Now? [3]
Category: Neon Genesis Evangelion
Genre: Character Study, F/M, Post-Canon, it's post-apocalyse, not really shipping centric, one more final and after, third impact really did a number on these two, when will I get over one more final
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-25
Updated: 2019-05-25
Packaged: 2020-03-14 16:19:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,078
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18951679
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chemicalflashes/pseuds/chemicalflashes
Summary: Part of growing up means finding a way to interact with others while distancing the pain. After the end, Shinji Ikari and Asuka Langley Soryu finally sit down and talk. Or try to. It's hard since the world seems rather hopeless at the moment.A sequel to 'did you try to understand?' but can be read independently.





	i never asked you what's wrong

**Author's Note:**

> So, third installment in the series! I am excited to present this to you and I hope you like it.

The sky is grey, the sea is red and there is absolutely no one here. Shinji Ikari stands alone on the shore of an empty world and Misato’s cross hangs loosely around his neck. His clothes are still wet from his swim in the LCL sea and the breeze that blows makes him shiver. No noises of living creatures reach him; all that exist are the gentle red sea and the howling wind.

He feels mad, and he probably _is_ , anyone will be after what all he just experienced. Someone is laughing and a voice mocks him. “Finally come to terms with the reality, Third Child?”

Shinji frowns. He remembers…that voice.

He was calling out to its owner a while ago, when he had been floating listlessly in the red sea. That had been a hopeless plea since the beginning. Nothing could persuade Asuka to look his way, which is fine, now that he thinks about it. He is better off alone.

There are pieces of driftwood scattered a few metres away from him. It looks like it came from boats. He moves towards the pieces without realising it. His shoes make wet crunching noises on the almost white sand. He is here and they are all in there, in the sea and in the ring of souls scattered across the grey sky and the pale yellow moon. Shinji’s hands twitch; he should do something. Voices of people he knew buzz in his ears.

How long will it be before he turns insane?

A clock ticks somewhere.

It’s insistent.

Shinji picks up a flat plank from the pile. It looks sturdy. Good. He picks another one and this is a bit shorter than the first. This exercise is going well. He goes hunting for some rope and everything is rotten but he is persistent in his search. The air carries a weird scent of dead fish and blood but Shinji just carries on, trying to not mind it. This is very important, after all.

An hour later, he looks at his handiwork.

A cross stands in the sand. It is a reminder for him that he is alone and that no one is coming back. He has no reason to believe what Ayanami or his mother told him back there. They were always hiding secrets so why must he believe them about this? Shinji killed everyone. There is no changing that fact. He is angry and sad and terrified. His hands are shaking as he nails Misato’s pendant to his little monument.

The sea laps at his feet; there is no stopping it.

It is now he notices a single white dismembered, normal sized arm lying behind him as he turns away from the cross and looks into the distance. He knows whose it is and he has no idea how it came to be there. Shinji turns back towards the sea. The white flesh sickens him but then, on turning back again there’s Lilith’s head in the horizon. He had been avoiding looking at it but now he just cannot tear his eyes away from it.

He is going to be sick. This place has nothing but ruins and death and Shinji cannot handle it. The initial shock seems to be creeping up on him now. He clutches his head and focusses on the cross.

“I can't see everyone anymore," he says aloud, "I think that is for the better.” His head throbs with pain and the stench from the sea doesn’t help in the slightest. “I’m alive so I’ll live,” he says through gritted teeth.

Suddenly there’s a noise in the water.

Rei Ayanami floats in the air, a few metres above the sea. But then he blinks and she is gone.

There’s a thing in the sea. It floats listlessly among the waves, just as he had been doing a few hours ago. Shinji walks into the water. Maybe this is a hallucination too and maybe he will drown, but he’s far too deep in to return without checking now.

He moves closer. The cold water bites his bones.

It’s a person with long, ginger hair. She’s dressed all in red.

It’s…Asuka. This cannot be real, surely? He catches hold of her anyway. The LCL infested water sloshes around them. She feels too real for a hallucination but Shinji supposes he’s too far gone now. He holds her by the waist and drags her out of the sea. Her eyes are closed.

Shinji doesn’t know for how long he lies beside her before finally snapping. Like before, there is a sound from the water, like a pebble skipping on its surface and he turns his head to see Ayanami floating in the distance just like earlier. The image of the solitary white arm flashes in his head for a split second and Shinji sits up. Asuka’s eyes are wide open now but she doesn’t blink. That’s all the more to believe that she is fake.

Something breaks inside him. She called him pathetic. She refused him when he wanted her help the most. She said that she didn’t want him if she couldn’t have him all to herself.

How fucking rude and insolent.

This person before him is a doll, anyway. No one is actually coming back and Shinji is so _angry_. ‘To hell with Asuka,’ he thinks, ‘and to hell with this whole world too’. Why did he ever choose this pathetic existence? There’s so much confusion. It is amidst this state of unrest that he finds himself climbing atop the prone girl and straddling her. His hands circle her long, narrow neck, just as they had done during Instrumentality.

He squeezes as hard as his shaking fingers allow him to. Her already wide eyes widen more. She gasps and the sound is weak. Shinji just chokes her harder. She just lies there and now he knows that this unmoving body beneath him is nothing more than a puppet.

Asuka is thinking very hard for the first time in a long while. A lot of questions fly through her head: What just happened? Where am I? When did I come to a beach? But the most important one of them all is: Why is Shinji choking me?

He does not have enough force to snuff her out quickly so she hasn’t blackened out yet. He looks close to tears and yet his eyes are empty as he glares her. His hands never stop. Suddenly Asuka is afraid. Will he let go only when she dies? She didn’t leave that incomprehensible world for this treatment. She came back to _live_. All of this is so sickening.

He grunts but immediately quietens down when she caresses his cheek softly. Her callused yet smooth hand glides on his face and it hits him.

Oh God, did he just try to kill her?

‘What kind of a monster am I?’ he thinks. His eyes are a hot blur now and tears drop down rapidly on Asuka’s face. She doesn’t budge even an inch. Shinji bends over her, crying and sniffing and he does not try to stop it. She just looks up ahead, past his head. The sky is dark blue and cloudy now. Why won’t he get off her? Why won’t he stop? Why does she feel so sick?

“How disgusting,” she whispers.

But what is disgusting? She? Her health? Shinji? This world? What all she just saw? She hears the waves move over the sound of Shinji’s cries. Perhaps all of those things are disgusting, she supposes.

She hates this and with what little strength she has, she tries to push him off herself. Luckily he takes the hint and moves away without much effort on her part.

“I would never let an idiot like you kill me,” she speaks. Her voice is raspy from the weakness.

Shinji just continues to cry. Asuka somehow brings herself to sit up. Like the waves in the red sea, there’s no stopping him.

 

* * *

 

Asuka blinks open her eyes and looks around the ceiling of the tent she shares with Shinji. She feels disoriented and she knows her pupils are probably wide in the darkness. Why did she dream about her return?

Beside her, Shinji stirs in his sleep and his arm lies relaxed on the curve of her waist. He held her yesterday night too, when she had been crying herself to sleep like she has been doing ever since she came back. She turns around in the covers to look at him and his arm falls in between them on the mattress with a muffled thud and suddenly she realises that her eyes are wet.

They had talked a little after dinner today. He had told her of what he had seen and done immediately after his return. That could be one of the reasons she had dreamt of that stuff in such vivid detail now. Shinji does not snore as he sleeps and he looks troubled. He always is frowning these days and speaks even less than before Instrumentality happened, which was already less. That’s probably why she had been glad to talk with him tonight, even though she is angry. Asuka hasn’t forgotten what Instrumentality showed her and what he did over her in that wretched hospital room.

But she cannot lash out now. If anything, Asuka has learnt that some sentences are better delivered in a cold and calculating way when people are not expecting them, and not in a hot argument. And besides, it does not look like he will say much even if she does show her anger. Shinji is more pathetic than he was before but…yesterday he held her. That changed a lot of things about her thoughts on him.

You don’t share Instrumentality with someone without knowing one or two things about them, anyway.

Asuka knows him better now and she realises that she never tried to understand him before and he didn’t try to understand her either, not really, but they can still try. She knows that he has always been a quiet child who has only known a lack of care and an absence of someone who actually listened. So yes, while she is angry at what he has done up until now, she cannot really say that she doesn’t understand his basic nature. She knows that he knows about her too: a girl who sought herself in Eva and ran from actual emotional bonds. She also knows that he won’t ever tell her that he knows.

She sighs. A cold drought comes rushing in from their tent’s opening and Asuka buries herself deeper into the thin blanket. They need to find more warm clothing soon. This isn’t looking good at all.

Suddenly Shinji strokes her bandaged arm and Asuka freezes. She cannot feel his warmth through the layer of bandages but she knows his hand is warm. He is muttering something – he does a lot of that in his sleep, she has come to find out but at the moment, she cannot make out what the words are. The boy is still frowning.

Maybe she will discard the bandages tomorrow; her arm and eye don’t hurt, anyway. Besides, she has already found out that she has wound marks spread on her whole body – they run from just above her breasts to right below where her hips end. But they don’t hurt at all, just like healed scar tissue. Maybe removing the bandages will uncover something similar on her arm and her face.

She dislikes the idea of being marked but there is nothing she can do about it. ‘Shinji just better not say anything funny, if he will say anything at all,’ she thinks.

Eventually, the girl drifts back to sleep.

 

* * *

 

Breakfast is silent the next morning and Shinji observes her quietly. She seems…fidgety, for lack of a better word. What’s on her mind?

She stands abruptly after finishing her meal – which is an instant packet of soup, and says, “I’ll go wash my hands now.” Asuka picks up a plastic water bottle from their stack of supplies and leaves.

He doesn’t understand why she felt the need to announce that; it’s not like he is monitoring her every move. The waves continue to move in the sea. Shinji frowns and he watches her form disappear in the far side of the beach, where the cross he had put up used to be. Her long brown frock flows with the wind. She had been wearing a short blue, sleeveless summer dress two days ago but the weather has been progressively getting colder. Shinji is still frowning as he looks at his own attire -- a full sleeved shirt and a pair of brown trousers that she found for him yesterday. They sit very loose on his wiry frame – looser than his old school uniform, but he’s grateful for the somewhat warmer clothing; the white and yellow t-shirt and cargo shorts from earlier had hardly been enough.

Shinji washes the dishes and clears whatever trash has gathered around their campsite but there’s no sign of Asuka coming back. ‘She has only gone to wash her hands, what could go wrong?’ he wonders. But a couple minutes change to half an hour and now he worries. The worse thing that could happen is that she could hit him for invading her privacy, but he would rather be sure she’s alright than be sorry later. He’s accustomed to her outbursts, anyway.

Damn, he should have asked if something was wrong.

He walks in the direction she went.

 

* * *

 

Asuka is pissed off. She had expected this but she is still pissed off.

The ribbon of her collar is unfastened and used bandages lie scattered around her, flailing lightly due to the wind like drowning castaways. She touches her left eye lightly and flinches slightly when she feels the skin to be a little rough. She doesn’t have to see her reflection to know that the area around her eye is permanently bruised and pink.

She feels like crying and maybe she already is. It happens far too suddenly these days and she cannot keep up with her emotions. Her whole body is a marked graveyard. She buries her face in her arms, forgetting that she is supposed to return to the camp and that time will still pass regardless of her marks. Nothing seems to matter anymore. Asuka has always prided her appearance and confidence and now she has lost both.

When the girl does decide to look up, she sees a figure standing a few metres away through her blurry eyes. She knows who that is; the probability of it being someone other than Shinji is negligible at the moment. When she wipes her eyes with her frock, she notices that the boy, to his credit, is looking away.

But she knows he saw her body is scarred, even if it was just for a brief moment, when she got back up. The A-10 neural connectors keeping her hair in place immediately feel very heavy for some reason. The wind blows hair in her eyes and Asuka knows that she wants him to _look_. All of a sudden, she feels very bold.

“You know, you can look at me. I won’t bite.”

He risks a glance but quickly looks away; her collar is still unfastened and Shinji would rather not relive his worst memories of a hospital room from before Third Impact. Asuka may (he’s actually sure she is not) be serious but he just rather _won’t_.

“Will you please button up?” he mutters.

“I won’t bite,” she insists.

He sighs and turns around to face her. He must be going mad. The clock from his first day back is ticking somewhere. It’s still insistent.

Luckily, Asuka is wearing a plain, white bra beneath her frock. Thank God for that. He’s standing right in front of her now and he does not understand when he covered the distance.

“Well, what do you think?” she asks brusquely.

He does not understand what she is worried about. To him, she still looks alright. What is she so concerned about? He knows this troubles her from the way her lips are twisted in a slight frown and the way her eyes look at the sand beneath their feet. Does this seriously bother her that much? And he has seen the pinkness on her abdomen (strangely his eyes could just not focus for long on that area) but he is sure she will be fine – _is_ fine.

What should he say? If he says she’s fine, he knows she will think that he is undermining her problems and be even angrier at him than she already is. But he doesn’t think anything is wrong…and if he does say this situation is bad, she will be hurt and probably leave him.

Shinji cannot afford either of those scenarios.

What is he supposed to do here?

“I am the same, Asuka,” he finally replies. He shows her his palms.

She glares at his hands. “I already know about your palms, idiot. We are the not the same. Your whole body is not marked like mine!”

“You are wrong,” he murmurs quietly. At this, she raises her gaze and is surprised to see how old and tired his eyes look.

“They had nine lances, ten if you count the original which had come hurling back from the moon, and they used three out of those on my Eva to confine it in some sort of a sick ritual. Then the original lance just entered Unit 01’s core after a while. So, if you must know, I have a very big wound on the whole of my chest.”

He just looks at his hands. His voice is wavering and suddenly very weak.

“You are not alone.”

And Asuka suddenly realises that she has never asked him what is wrong. She has made her presumptions up until now but never asked that.

In the day, the red streak across the sky hides due to clouds. She wants to do the same.

 

* * *

 

They are looking for supplies alone today. “It’s for covering a bigger area,” she says but that’s just her cover to be able to be alone for some time. She doesn’t actually want to be alone but she needs some time to think. Shinji is clearly ill, if she puts it all together in her head. She is probably ill too, it is possible that they all were since the start, but Ikari is clearly going off the edge these days. She knows he hears stuff in his head. She cannot even pinpoint what he might be having; her degree was in Applied Physics, not Psychology. Where is she supposed to find a psychiatrist in the middle of this post-apocalypse situation?

The sound of something enormous falling down in the distance reaches her ears.

 _Fuck_ , leaving him alone was such a bad idea.

Something burns bright at the corner of the street. Asuka just hurries on. When she does reach the exact location, there’s too much grey smoke to see anything clearly. She coughs and splutters but continues her search nonetheless and –

He is sitting on the pavement, just out of the periphery of the rapidly diffusing smoke.

“What happened here?!” she manages to shout and grabs his arm. But when she tugs on, he just continues sitting. His head is bent low.

“I’m such an idiot.”

Her jaw clenches. Mental illness or not, at the end of the day, she is a fourteen year old girl and not a psychologist.

“I know that!” she bellows. “Now, will you get up?”

Strangely, he complies without any further resistance and she drags him out of the smoke. She notes his hand is opening and closing rapidly. She wonders if it is her neck he wants to close in his fingers on. A shiver runs down her spine. For the past two days, she had actually forgotten that Shinji scared her now. But the fear is back in full force after seeing the fire reflected in his lifeless eyes.

“I am a fucking idiot.”

Eh, again?

“I just want to feel something but at the same time I know I feel so much already. It makes no sense at all. You were always right and I think I hated you for that. But you were the only one who was real with me and I never thanked you for that.”

What twisted logic is he going off on?

But Shinji doesn’t stop to take her thoughts into account. “I did something terrible to you and I am sure you were aware of it and yet you called for me in your last fight and I did nothing. I was so paralysed with guilt over what I did to an unconscious you that I never got off my butt to help you when you were actually breathing. What kind of a twisted person am I?!”

Sweat is running down his head even though the air around them is dry from the smoke and cold. His entire body is shaking.

This isn’t good. And this is too soon…she had wanted to talk about these things on a calm day when he had not been expecting it but now he’s screaming and hyperventilating and --

“Misato told me to help you, but I let her down too. In the end, I just lead everyone down! Touji got injured because me, Kaworu died because of me, you died because of me and then I went and caused the fucking Third Impact and then _everyone_ died which is just so great!”

She wants to say that those events were not even under his control. But instead of that, Asuka can only say, “Shinji, calm down.”

But he isn’t listening.

“And I never even asked how you were feeling! I just deluded myself into thinking that I tried to understand everyone. I am a pompous fool! Today I saw your scars and it hit me so bad that there was no one to blame for those but me. And god, I hated you for accusing me of not understanding anyone but you were right and you have done nothing but put up with me since we came back. I don’t deserve any of this.”

His words from when he was exiting Instrumentality whisper in her ear. What on earth happened to the boy who had accepted himself?

“You deserve to be here, Shinji.” She stresses his name; it seems like a good idea. “You deserve to be here because you are yourself, nothing more or nothing less.”

“But don’t you hate me?”

Asuka sighs. She has been sighing so much today. “I am angry at you. I used to hate you, but even that was not exactly real, and I believe that anger and hate are quite different, anyway.”

He just hangs his head. She cannot look at his eyes.

A few seconds pass and she notices that the fire is dying out now.

“We should go back to the camp.”

He trudges behind her slowly.

 

* * *

 

When they go to sleep that night, Asuka is the one to hold him. He’s burning up. She had given him a paracetamol tablet after dinner but it hasn’t kicked in yet, it seems.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry…” he mutters repeatedly. She isn’t sure who exactly is he apologising to. She runs her hands along his arms to calm him down but his chants don’t stop. It’s a long time before he finally falls silent and his breathing evens out.

It’s raining tonight. The rains are a slimy mixture of LCL and water now and it disgusts her that literal blood falls down from the skies. But this one doesn’t last for long, thankfully. While rummaging for supplies today, Asuka found a small quilt. Thankfully she had remembered to take it even after the chaos that had followed.

She wraps the pastel blue thing around her shoulders and steps out. The sand is wet and has a pink tint in it. There are more clouds in the horizon and of course, absolutely no signs of other people. The blood splattered moon glows. They will go mad in this wasteland and it will be both slow and painful. They’ll drown in it. She trembles in spite of the warm quilt.

A clock ticks somewhere.

It’s insistent.

 

**Author's Note:**

> The opening scene incorporated both of Gainax's initial plans for the ending, which were ultimately scrapped in favour of the version we know, but I thought they all fit in a linear manner, so I incorporated them all.
> 
> Please leave a comment! I would love to know your thoughts.


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